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“... is full of sarcasm and mischief, fundamentalism turned against the fundamentalists. He is about to grant the unfortunate boy’s father compensation in the amount of $19.76. But he (and Gaddis) are having fun with the idea of an act of God; and elsewhere Gaddis sets up the frolic of one’s own as a definition of the artist. He or she is at work, and ...”

“... light it for you with my Dunhill.’ ‘May I have this dance, Lady Darlene? I am the Earl of Grant ford.’ ‘Indeed you may, Earl, honey. I am Lady Darlene.’ There are even touches of Gracie (or is it Woody?) Allen:   ‘Was your father weak, passive, absent from home a lot?’   ‘You mean before he died?’ There is also a glum, constant ...”

“... and Roman citizenship gives Beard her stopping point: the emperor Caracalla’s decision to grant Roman citizenship to every free inhabitant of the empire in ad 212, at a time when those who were legally Roman made up perhaps 20 per cent of a population of tens of millions. It’s a decision that has never been plausibly explained on practical ...”

“... of some of the senior curators in the Museum. The money was ‘found’ in the 1988-1989 Buildings Grant, some of which had, conveniently, not been spent at the end of the year. Suspicion is aroused by the repeated protestations in the House of Lords Debate that it is quite normal to be underspent in this way. If there is nothing fishy about this diversion of ...”

“... Mitt Romney has now joined Bob Dole, Michael Dukakis and Walter Mondale in the political void that awaits any rejected American presidential nominee who doesn’t care to linger into senatorial senescence. Dole appeared in adverts for Viagra. Dukakis has been a public transport activist. Mondale, in 2002, at the age of 74, ran an 11-day campaign for his old Minnesota Senate seat after Paul Wellstone was killed in a plane crash ...”

“... to the collapse of part of Liverpool’s economy was formulated in the wake of the Toxteth riots. Michael Heseltine assumed a kind of viceroy role – not inappropriate, given the similarities between part of the local economy and that of the Third World. A task force of civil servants was established, headed, at first, by Eric Sorensen, one of the brightest ...”

“... after the league shut down in March. Fans and players retreated to their homes and watched Michael Jordan instead. The basketball podcasts I listen to paused their endless speculation about the shutdown and the possible resumption of play (later that summer, the league finished the season in a bubble at Disney World in Florida) and gave in to nostalgia ...”

“... thus armed she embarked on an extraordinary career of conquest. Of her seven husbands only Cary Grant was self-sufficient. The others, a sporty lot, wooed with aeroplanes and pensioned off with palazzos, were toys she picked up and threw away. Some caught her anorexia – dinner might consist of a dozen gin and tonics – and most endured cruel humiliation ...”

“... the House was efficiently run and should be more generously supported. A one-off increase in the grant followed, but Priestley’s crucial recommendation, that the annual grant be pegged to inflation, was disregarded. Opera and ballet were luxuries that must be paid for by their audiences. Cash was now coming in from ...”

“... other selections from his working drafts. Yours Presently, the new volume of letters edited by Michael Seth Stewart, shows Wieners cutting across various groups in American avant-garde writing.‘A homosexual,’ Wieners wrote, ‘since he has been a stigma or outcast freak for so long, does not [usually] have a chance to meditate upon himself, even as a ...”

“... I imagine, formed our several ideas of what an argument is. But Locke – Locke plods. Aside from Michael Ayers, how many contributors to this issue of the Review, reviewers or reviewees, have read Locke’s Essay, word for word, from beginning to end? Fewer, perhaps, than would like to admit it. But Locke rules. No matter how briefly he is skimmed or how ...”

“... invitation to the rulers of Europe to enter his service, and that he had promised in return to grant his European supporters high administrative office and large estates. Strenuous attempts were made to locate the fabulous ruler, who was thought to hold court somewhere north of India. He could not, however, be found, which was scarcely surprising since he ...”

“... his crew had found themselves in Paris in May 1968 in the thick of the événements. His producer, Michael Gill, recalls ‘riot police … just off-camera’, adding, laconically: ‘I was gassed.’ Despite being so apparently out of sympathy with the temper of ‘these days’, Civilisation was hugely popular. Now, when even more of what Clark stood for ...”

“... can be surmised for the romantic socialism of Aneurin Bevan, and for the romantic sociology of Michael Young and Raymond Williams, as the views of these three have been characterised. One of the best sayings culled for the new volume is drawn from Bevan, and is as good as the ‘poetry’ heard by someone in his speeches. ‘Lazy? Lazy?’ Bevan responded ...”

“... when he began this book could, he says, ‘be written out on a luggage tag’. But (like Cary Grant, perhaps, in North by Northwest) he found himself irresistibly drawn in. His thoroughness and energy are phenomenal. He visits every place important to his grandfathers in Ireland, Turkey and the Middle East, tracks down every relevant surviving functionary ...”